Category Archives: Humanities

What She Said

It has never been easy for me to understand the obliteration of time, to accept, as others seem to do, the swelling and corresponding shrinkage of seasons or the conscious acceptance that one year has ended and another begun. There is something here that speaks of our essential helplessness and how the greater substance of our lives is bound up with waste and opacity.

–Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries (1993)

I’ve just begun reading The Stone Diaries, and the above passage grabbed my attention. It correlates with an awareness I experienced last night while I attended a meditative dance. During the dance (I was the one dancing), I felt alive, sinuous, vibrant, and joyful. This was accompanied simultaneously by a wave of sadness, or grief, for all the years, months, days, and minutes that I have allowed to pass without notice. It is not grief that they are gone. I feel grief for not having appreciated and lived them fully. I look back over the expanse of my life, knowing there were many hours spent dully staring at a television, fretting over debt, escaping through daydreams, stewing with boredom at menial jobs, feeling trapped and powerless. I also recall moments of joy, expanses of ease, and the lightness of being. I wish they consisted the majority, but alas, they don’t.

This is the process of awakening, of becoming fully present. I shall just keep waking every moment I can remember to. Bit by bit, I’ll end up being here more often than not.

American Jesus

This new title — American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon — looks to be interesting. It’s an account of the many views humanity has had to Jesus, from superhuman to moral man, and how these perpectives have influenced culture.

From the excerpt of the book review by R. Scott Appleby in the New York Times:

As an author Mr. Prothero is nothing if not sly. Within his narrative, ostensibly a popular and often entertaining account of the rendering of Jesus in song, story and spirituality, he has embedded a fairly detailed history of American religion itself — one of the subtle achievements of “American Jesus.”

Equally subtle is his judgment that the persistence of Jesus’ presence in American culture, in whatever form, is proof that the United States is not a secularized nation. Yet Jesus’ success in insinuating himself into television, movies, popular song and the marketplace does not mean that he has transformed or even significantly influenced secular institutions and practices. Indeed, the influence has often worked in the opposite direction: American markets, politics and philosophy — not least, the perennial pull of pragmatism in all things — have pushed Christianity in the United States into forms and expressions unrecognizable to previous generations of Jesus’ followers.

More than one-third of “American Jesus” is devoted to the appropriation of Jesus by Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, the Dalai Lama and the Nation of Islam. In itself, this is fascinating and instructive material. For Prothero, the diffusion of Jesus into the thought worlds and sensibilities of non-Christian Americans constitutes the great triumph of the protean Jesus. Unfortunately, the celebration of Jesus’ ubiquity occasionally echoes a tired mantra: “Church bad, American individualism good. Religion bad, spirituality good. Christianity oppressive, other religions lighthearted.”

This is definitely going on the “to be read” list.

Awakening to Here and Now

I found this meditation by Pir-o-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan, a Sufi, to be thought-provoking:

It is the awakening of the soul which is mentioned in the Bible: unless the soul is born again it will not enter into the kingdom of heaven. For the soul to be born again means that it is awakened after having come on earth, and entering the kingdom of heaven means entering this world in which we are now standing, the kingdom which turns into heaven as soon as the point of view has changed. Is it not interesting and most wonderful to think that the same earth that we walk on is earth to one person and heaven to another? And it is still more interesting to notice that it is we who change it from earth to heaven. This change comes not by study nor by anything else but by the changing of our point of view.

From: A Meditation Theme for Each Day
Selected and arranged by Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

Words to Ponder #78

The charity that begins at home cannot rest there but draws one inexorably over the threshold and off the porch and down the street and so out and out and out and out into the world which becomes the home wherein charity begins until it becomes possible, in theory at least, to love the whole of creation with the same patience, affection, and amusement one first practiced, in between the pouts and tantrums, with parents, siblings, spouse, and children.

–Nancy Mairs, Ordinary Time (1993)

Where Does It Go?

From time to time most of us aspire to episodes of timelessness, if that isn’t a contradiction in terms. Parents look at their children, or we look at our parents, and there is a horrifying thrill in how rapidly they change, a thrill that makes us want to stop time, as much for ourselves as for them. There are days so beautiful, so productive, so happy that we would like to fix them in our minds for good as the prototype of all days — while knowing that what makes those days so memorable is also the fact that they slide past as if by their own momentum.

Between the Years – New York Times, 1/1/04

Happy New Year! I hope your holidays brought some joy amidst all the chaos. Here we are, full of hope and resolution to improve ourselves. What is it about the turn of the calendar every 12 months that causes us to aspire to change? A more logical new year would be one’s birthday, actually.

In any case, I didn’t make any resolutions. Nope, not a one. I’ve decided, this year, to apply the concept of intention. (Yes, I know what they say about intentions, but I’m not playing.) I believe there really is a difference. A resolution feels like a declaration — a promise to deliver — with expectation turning to disappointment and judgment if it is not fulfilled. Who wants to start a new year with guilt?

Intention feels different. I’ve identified what I would like to do this year and will use this list to keep me inspired. The issue of whether or not I do them isn’t paramount. If I slack off, there is no sense of failure. I’ll just remember my purpose and return to fufilling my intentions as best as I can. (This is similar to meditation. When you notice yourself thinking, the point is not to castigate yourself for failing to keep an empty mind. That’s a distraction. You simply notice that you’re thinking and then return to meditation.) This way, I’ll fulfill my intentions to some degree and not fritter away NOW with self-recrimination. Sounds a lot more fun, don’t you think?

Words to Ponder #75

As a way of ushering in the New Year, here are two quotes for good measure.

Celebratin’ New Year’s Eve is like eatin’ oranges. You got to let go your dignity t’ really enjoy ’em.

–Edna Ferber, Buttered Side Down (1912)

The etiquette question that troubles so many fastidious people New Year’s Day is: How am I ever going to face those people again?

–Judith Martin, Miss Manners’ Guide to Excrutiatingly Correct Behavior (1982)

Happy New Year! See you in 2004.

Want Some?

Aaron is on the bima, speeding through the final brachot after completing his Haftorah portion when a warm flush starts at his toes and spreads, opening like a feather fan, to the top of his head. Suddenly, every particle of him is shimmering. He can sense each part of his body, down to each hair on his head, but at the same time feels he is one fluid whole. Though his mouth keeps moving, he is no longer focused on the prayers before him. They have become body knowledge, so deeply ingrained that they flow as naturally as air from his lungs. Aaron can sense the approach of something larger, a sea swell building up to a huge wave. Then, in a moment so intense Aaron has no idea he is still standing, it hits.

Every person in the room becomes part of him. He can suddenly see the temple from forty-six different perspectives, through forty-six pairs of eyes. He is linked. He feels the theme and variation of forty-six heartbeats, the stretch and release of forty-six pairs of lungs, the delicate interplay of warm and cool air currents on a congregation of arms, hands, and faces. For one breathtaking moment, Aaron is completely unself-conscious. He feels total acceptance and total love.

–Myla Goldberg, Bee Season (2000)

As defined at Mysticism in World Religions, “Mysticism is concerned with the nature of reality, the individual’s struggle to attain a clear vision of reality, and the transformation of consciousness that accompanies such vision.”

Here are some other sources on mysticism:

The Problem of Stasis

The problem is we think we exist. We think our words are permanent and solid and stamp us forever. That’s not true. We write in the moment. Sometimes when I read poems at a reading to strangers, I realize they think those poems are me. They are not me, even if I speak in the “I” person. They were my thoughts and my hand and the space and the emotions at the time of writing. Watch yourself. Every minute we change. It is a great opportunity. At any point, we can step out of our frozen selves and our ideas and being fresh. That is how writing is. Instead of freezing us, it frees us.

–Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones (1986)

On Awareness

From lactose incompetent:

Homo Sapiens Sapiens, the scientific name for the human species, translates roughly as “we’re aware that we’re aware”. We understand the concept of time, of past and future, but I wonder if that’s really an advantage and not some sort of evolutionary fluke, a defect in our intelligence. It deprives us of so much joy in life, the ability to live in the now because we’re analyzing and replaying the past and worrying about the future.

Words to Ponder #70

Being a child is largely a flux of bold and furtive guesswork, fixed ideas continually dislodged by scrambling and tentative revision…. All our energy and cunning go into getting our bearings without letting on that we are ignorant and lost.

–Fernanda Eberstadt, Isaac and His Demons (1991)

Rights For Children (Even Big Ones)

Rights For Children

I have the right to be here.
I have the right to be a child.
I have the right to belong to a loving family.
I have the right to play.
I have the right to make a mistake.
I have the right to be treated with respect.
I have the right to proper food, clothing, and cleanliness.
I have the right to learn.
I have the right to tender care when I am sick or hurt.
I have the right to do things for myself and to get help if I need it.
I have the right to express myself without interruption.
I have the right to move freely at my own initiative.
I have the right to make my own friends.
I have the right to make choices.
I have the right to enter into meaningful activities.
I have the right to develop at my own pace and to be unhurried.
I have the right to privacy.
I have the right to be listened to.

— Jane Scoggins

I own this in poster form and in my last job, had it hanging on the wall. I counsel adults. Yet the problems adults have are often rooted in hurtful lessons they learned in childhood about who they are, their worth, and their role in life. Many clients have rested their gaze on these words and found their hearts responding to one or more statements. It is often a fruitful threshold for exploration and deepening insight.